summer outreach – For students missing school often enough to fall behind, summer isn’t downtime—it’s when trust can be rebuilt. Van Dyke Public Schools says a human-centered approach to contacting chronically absent students and families helped reduce chronic absenteeism at Li
The halls go quiet after the last bus leaves. For many educators, June feels like a long exhale—an end to months of schedules, meetings, and pressure.
But in Van Dyke Public Schools, Superintendent Piper Bognar says that slower pace never fully settles in. Summer, she argues, is where the real work begins—especially for families school districts most need to reach. For them, she says, summer is not a break from school problems. It’s the window to act before the next year starts, when catching up later can swallow an entire calendar.
Chronic absenteeism, Bognar emphasizes, doesn’t stop when the school year ends. In the U.S., 23 percent of all students—nearly one-fourth—miss enough school to fall significantly behind. In her view. those numbers translate directly to children in her community whose futures depend on whether adults show up early. before the first bell rings in fall.
Van Dyke Public Schools has spent years working alongside families facing serious hardships. including housing instability. health issues. and transportation obstacles. Some students. Bognar notes. have even been put into situations where they must assume caregiver roles for younger siblings because of family circumstances. “These are explanations for absenteeism, not justifications,” she writes—problems that she says no robo-call or form letter can resolve.
The approach she describes is rooted in a simple idea: relationships have a season.
When school is not in session, attendance notices stop. Disciplinary conversations go quiet. And the pressures that can build during the school year—especially for families who don’t trust institutional systems enough to feel safe walking into their own homes—ease slightly. Bognar says that’s why families often become more receptive to a meaningful dialogue in summer.
She points to what happens when her team reaches out during break “not with a warning. not with a consequence. ” but with a sincere person asking about a child’s needs. In that moment, she says, defensiveness that accumulates across the school year is lessened. The contact is no longer about something going wrong; it’s about what lies ahead.
Bognar ties that experience to research findings from root-cause analysis of chronic absenteeism. She says families who disengage from school typically do so not because they are indifferent to their child’s education. but because they are overwhelmed and exhausted. Many. she adds. have had negative experiences that lead them to believe they cannot rely on institutional systems for support—meaning institutional trust cannot be built during a quick back-to-school night conversation. Trust has to be established before then.
The district’s results, Bognar says, reflect that sequencing. Efforts to reconnect with families and restore trust contributed to chronic absenteeism declining at Lincoln High School. from 64% in 2023-2024 to 58% in 2024-2025. At Lincoln Middle School, chronic absenteeism fell from 59% in 2023-2024 to 50% in 2024-2025.
Van Dyke Public Schools has chosen to commit resources toward engaging students and families during the summer months as a central part of its attendance strategy. Bognar says the work is supported by Concentric Educational Solutions. and that the outreach to chronically absent students and their families during summer months is offered as an example of the human-centered approach she believes is necessary for lasting change.
When outreach happens during summer. she describes it in practical terms: visiting residences; making phone calls that she says appear more personable than administrative; and listening before speaking. The message, she writes, is not just statistical. It tells every family contacted: “You are an important part of our community and we want you to return to school.” She says that message “lands differently” in July than it does in October.
Bognar’s appeal extends beyond her district. She encourages educational leaders across Michigan and the United States to look closely at their summer calendars and evaluate how they use the time. For students who are disengaging and disconnecting from opportunity. she says. summer is either a pathway back to school—or a longer pathway away from it. For families. she adds. it can become a route to reconnecting with community resources. with school as the most important anchor.
She closes with a message grounded in what she calls the cost of ignoring the season. Maintaining student connection to school, she says, requires extensive, continuous, inherently human-centered effort. But summer offers a rare chance during the school year: the opportunity to prevent problems from arising rather than chasing after them once they are already in motion.
That chance, Bognar argues, is too valuable to squander.
chronic absenteeism summer outreach attendance strategy Van Dyke Public Schools Lincoln High School Lincoln Middle School Piper Bognar educational leadership Concentric Educational Solutions